Accolades

Start with a dream. Add guts. Stir
in a
secret recipe. And voila: one tasty career.

BY DAWN WILLIAMS

PHOTOS BY
DANIEL BEDELL

Chocolatier Tina Buck has turned her
passion for truffles into a rich
livelihood.

“This may look like a lot of wine, but
the alcohol will cook down,” says Tina Buck with a grin.
She uncorks two bottles of Contessa Lago Rosso wine,
from vineyards just down the road, and pours it into a
pot on her kitchen cook top.

When the wine simmers, she adds
the good stuff: heaping scoops of rich, dark-chocolate
chunks (the exact brand is a well-guarded secret). As
Buck mixes – everything is stirred by hand – she glances
at handwritten notes, fastened to an antique recipe
stand. Mix, mix, mix…a few ingredients later, the
10-pound batch of ganache is silky smooth, a delicious
shade of deep lavender. The aroma is sinful, but Buck’s
decadent truffles are pure heaven.

Many people know Tina Buck, owner
of The Chocolate Garden in Coloma, Mich., as the
“chocolate lady,” the woman who concocts bliss-inducing
truffles. They have visited her charming shop,
surrounded by peach orchards and rolling hills. They’ve
watched her on the Food Network and Fox News and read
rave reviews of her truffles in Elle magazine.

But what many people don’t know
is that Buck, at the age of 36, walked away from a
successful career as an advertising account executive –
managing $25 million worth of accounts in Chicago and
Minneapolis – to devote herself to making truffles.

“I got an advertising degree
[from Michigan State University] because it appeared
that was the only career where you could be creative and
strategic,” says Buck, a native of North Adams, Mich.
After college, she landed a plum job at Foote, Cone &
Belding – at the time, the fifth-largest agency in the
world – and was assigned to the Sara Lee account.

“It was great because we did advertising and marketing
for their sweet goods, and I’ve always loved sweets,”
she says. “We also worked on new product development and
spent a lot of time talking about chocolate and
researching chocolate.”

One day,
Buck stumbled on an article explaining why truffles are
the royalty of the chocolate world. Intrigued, she
whipped up a batch of truffles for clients and
colleagues as Christmas gifts.

“I
experimented and altered ingredients and finally came up
with a recipe that I liked in terms of texture and
flavor,” she explains.

Each year
after that, friends began asking about her sublime
holiday gifts by early November. A vice president at the
company took her aside and said, “I don’t usually
encourage good people to leave, but these are unlike
anything I’ve ever had. You should make a business out
of this.”

In the end, she stuck
with advertising for 15 years. “I didn’t like it,” she
says. “I was good at what I did, I was making great
money, but I was still very unhappy.”

Until a date with the treadmill turned her world upside
down.

“I was working out and a
voice in my head just said, ‘What are you waiting for?’”
Buck got off the treadmill and immediately started
writing. “Everything just poured out of me: the name of
the company, the look of the packaging. I even knew that
I wanted to be in southwest Michigan to be close to my
two nieces.”

Even after that
epiphany, Buck proceeded with caution. “I was giving up
a lot and wanted to make sure it wasn’t the dumbest idea
ever,” she says. “So I leased a kiosk at a mall on
Michigan Avenue in Chicago from Thanksgiving to New
Year’s. I sat there for 10 hours a day for 30-some days
and sold truffles and watched how people responded to
the product and the packaging.”

By
the time her lease on the kiosk expired, Buck was
convinced that she had finally found her passion in
life. In 1998, Buck officially became a professional
chocolatier, opening the doors of The Chocolate Garden.

A record-breaking 898,000 new U.S. businesses also
opened their doors in 1998. But the “chocolate lady” is
surviving just fine. “I definitely underestimated how
well our little shop would do,” states Buck, who employs
six full-time employees and doubles the staff during the
holiday season. “Sales were up 40 percent last year, and
up over 100 percent for the first quarter of this year.”
She’s also partnered with two Michigan restaurants –
Timothy’s in Union Pier and Wood Fire Trattoria in
Dowagiac – and the Chicago-based wine, chocolate and
cheese bar ENO.

On a recent
morning, The Chocolate Garden’s 750-square-foot kitchen
is humming with activity. The truffle offerings have
expanded to 14 sumptuous flavors. Buck, the “chief
chocolate officer,” still makes every batch of ganache
and is almost finished with her newest flavor, the
dreamy Lago Rosso.

“This is a
definite perk,” Buck announces, holding up the
chocolate-covered spoon like a trophy and taking a long,
gratifying lick.

It’s a sweet
life, indeed. “Every day is creative and different,” she
says. And her days begin in her most favorite way –
without an alarm clock. “It’s one of the best things
about this, but it’s not like I’m sleeping ‘til noon.
I’m up by 4:30 in the morning, but it’s by choice and I
love it.”

In the spring of 2007, Tina was featured on the cover
of the local hospital's magazine for her fundraising
efforts of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. She was
recognized for raising over $100,000 for cystic fibrosis
research.